The Last Invisible Boy, by Evan Kuhlman

This book has a ton of illustrations, all done by a guy named J. P. Coovert. It was published in 2008 and is 235 pages long, but has 89 (Oh, let's just call it 90) chapters. That makes the chapters very short, roughly averaging under 3 pages. I started it on Feb. 9 and then finished it just now on the 11th. I've gotta say, after having read the juvenile Masterpiece, I thought this book would be one for the young 'uns too, but it actually was really good, even when I finally learned that the main character, Finn Garrett, was only 12.

By the title, you'd probably think it was about a kid who has an invisible family and he has all kinds of fun, but that's not quite it. It's more of a picture journal of random stuff in a boy's life who's just lost his father and is for some unearthly reason turning very pale and ghost-like, as if he's about to be erased from existence. It's not like he got bitten by a radioactive spider or got attacked by a ghost or anything, so it's a bit weird. You just have to suspend belief, pretend that boys start turning morbidly invisible after their dad dies.

Anyway, I really liked it. It's not like the stupid Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. It's almost like Finn is writing a blog of his life, and he has such a cool writing style that I wish I was able to follow him. He has a funny little quirk too, which is finding out the meanings of people's names and seeing if they fit their owners. Those kind of quirks are fun, and really make you feel like you know a person. For example, I love making up names of characters out of words hardly anyone uses and making them a play on words, so that someday I'll be able to write about a book about them and their funny adventures. Like this. Ever hear of altruism? I think it means putting others first, and being self-sacrificing. So I made up a character named Altru, who is a brave young knight in training, kind of like the Denduron knight, Alder, from the Pendragon universe. I also know someone who has a funny quirk of writing down fascinating ideas for chapter titles. ^,^

So I think you should look out for this book. All the pictures in it make it a nice, non-difficult read, which should be good news to the people who usually resist reading. It might take awhile to discover what actually happened to Finn's dad and why he's turning invisible, but that's only because it's a touchy subject for Finn. By the way he writes, I think there's going to be a couple sequels. Just like someone waiting for the next great blog post, I'll be waiting.